The private money lenders at We Lend are motivated by helping their clients achieve wealth.

Summer 1996. Ruben Izgelov has just spent several hours hawking flyers to pedestrians hustling along busy Queens Boulevard in New York, hoping to persuade them to patronize area pizzerias and sushi restaurants.

It was the young immigrant from Turkmenistan’s first taste of entrepreneurship.

“If you can imagine an eight-year-old, two years into America, distributing flyers for $1 an hour,” Izgelov said. “The beauty was it was in cash. And they made sure to give it to me in singles. I remember just counting it over and over and over. And that sense of, ‘Hey, I can make money out of just putting my time into something,’ that resonated with me for life.”

Today, Izgelov is the co-founder and managing partner of We Lend LLC, a New York-based private money lender serving real estate investors of all sizes across the United States by providing quick and low‑cost capital on their investment properties.

Real Estate Beckons

Izgelov’s foray into real estate began when he was just 13. His cousin Avi had come to the U.S. from Israel and began buying up physically and financially distressed properties. Avi invited Izgelov to “go knocking” with him, thinking that having a youngster in tow would lead to more open doors.

“I kind of got the taste of real estate,” Izgelov recalls. “My cousin was able to close some deals, and I went to the closings with him. I saw the type of money he was making, and I was hooked.”

They found a niche in off-market distressed properties that didn’t involve third parties or wholesalers. They connected the off-market deals to real estate investors and operators who were interested in those types of assets, flipping the properties over to them for a wholesale fee. Once they built their “war chest,” Izgelov and his cousin started buying properties themselves.

Izgelov eventually dropped out of high school to work as a loan originator. He was successful at what he did—until the markets turned during the Great Recession.

“I went from making all this money to almost nothing within a very short period of time,” he said.

A Change in Fortunes

He confided in his father, who had been an entrepreneur in Turkmenistan, revealing he had just a couple of months of savings left. His father gave him a pep talk, reminding him that he was young, without responsibilities, and could start over. But his father had one demand: He made Izgelov promise he would finish his education.

“But not just my high school degree,” Izgelov said. “He made me promise I would go all the way to either law or med school. So, I kept my word.”

Izgelov graduated cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in legal studies from St. John’s University in 2013. In 2017, he received his Juris Doctor from Touro University’s Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center, graduating magna cum laude and ranking in the Top 10 of his class. Even so, it was his extracurricular activity of buying and flipping real estate in the New York City area that taught him one of his biggest lessons: He realized he and his cousin needed to find a cheaper source of capital for their deals.

“We were paying true hard money lenders,” he said, “guys that didn’t have an email—they only had a fax machine. We were borrowing from them at 12 to 14 percent.”

Izgelov’s fortune changed when he and his cousin attended a private lender event shortly after Izgelov graduated. At the time, he was working as a real estate attorney, reviewing contracts. During the conference, Izgelov sat in on a presentation about investments and returns.

After listening to the speaker, he did some “napkin-type” math with his cousin. They realized they could be making better returns while making debt investments versus equity investments. Izgelov also realized he wasn’t cut out to be an attorney, sitting behind a desk all day, analyzing documents and marking them up.

“We went in as private investors,” he said, “and we actually walked out as private lenders. We started We Lend LLC, and we never looked back.”

Izgelov’s co-founders are his cousins, Moses Suleymanov, We Lend’s director of credit analysis, and Solomon Suleymanov, the firm’s director of originations.

Initial Growth—and Then a Shift

Izgelov’s co-founders are his cousins, Moses Suleymanov, We Lend’s director of credit analysis, and Solomon Suleymanov, the firm’s director of originations.

“Family is everything to us,” said Izgelov. “So, when we started buying, selling, flipping, developing, it was natural for me to do it with my cousins and my older brother Nison Izgelov. Then it was natural for us to grow into We Lend together. We have a level of respect for one another, and that has helped us grow.”

Izgelov’s cousins concur.

“Working within a family business has its ups and downs,” said Moses, “however, the yearn to grow and see the success of your family outweighs all of the downs.”

Solomon noted that working together as a team has been instrumental to We Lend’s growth.

“We are able to overcome challenges and thrive due to a strong emphasis on communication, clearly defined roles and responsibilities, and a commitment to supporting one another. The key to a successful family dynamic in a business setting is for family members to work together as a team and to prioritize the well-being of the business as well as the individual family members,” he said.

We Lend certainly has grown. It made its first loan in May 2018, shortly after being incorporated. Since then, the company has reviewed more than 4,000 loan applications and funded about 1,000 loans with a value of approximately $400 million. Before the pandemic, We Lend was growing more than 100% annually. Although the company continues to see strong annual growth, Izgelov says its focus is shifting.

“We are raising capital to become more of a portfolio lender, but we still have an arm where we fund and sell loans,” he said. “We did start a debt fund, a 506(c) Reg D, and we are actively raising capital. The idea is to become more of a portfolio lender and perform for our investors, while at the same time, be able to perform for our borrowers. The combination of the two is very important.”

Izgelov said We Lend is also exploring the possibility of starting new verticals, one of them being a real estate brokerage.

“It’s just natural for us to enter into new verticals that complement what we’re doing,” Izgelov said.

Ultimately, Izgelov would like We Lend to become a business with origination volumes of $1-2 billion annually and leave it as a legacy for their families.

Adding Value

Noting that his family still owns and operates real estate, Izgelov said they know what it’s like to be in a borrower’s shoes, which drives We Lend’s investor-centric approach.

“Borrowers aren’t just borrowers—they’re your clients, right? They’re the ones that drive our business. The secret sauce is making sure your borrowers are always top of mind,” he said.

He acknowledges that We Lend performs a balancing act as it strives to make good loans for investors and simultaneously make good loans to good borrowers.

Izgelov says that one of the main reasons We Lend has grown as fast as it has during the last four years is they add value for their borrowers by being able to bring deals to them. “A lot of times we’ll call our borrowers, and they say, ‘We are sitting on dry powder; we just can’t find a good deal.’ So, what we’ve been able to do is curate a marketplace, where we have wholesalers, realtors, and other investors that are always either selling deals off-market, looking for other partners or investors into their deals. We bridge that gap and bring them together. We can call a client and say, ‘Hey, we have this amazing deal where you can make X amount on your money and we can finance it for you too.ʼ”

Helping his clients build wealth is one of his greatest motivators. “We track a lot of analytics,” he said, “and one of them is our clients’ net worth. We have a lot of repeat business. The more deals we do with a borrower, the higher their net worth. It warms my heart, because while I’m earning a living for my own family, we’re also building wealth for other people. For me, that sense of accomplishment through them is huge.”

Coming Full Circle

Izgelov acknowledges the abundance of resources available for private lenders through conferences, online portals, podcasts, and the American Association of Private Lenders.

But his first mentor, his father, is still his greatest resource and inspiration. An owner of multiple businesses in his native Turkmenastan, he spent his life driving a cab after immigrating to the U.S. Although he tried starting several business ventures, he was unable to overcome the language barrier and adapt to differences in U.S. systems. Still, Izgelov said, his father wanted nothing more than for his children to be entrepreneurs like he had been, to create their own destinies and never have to work for anyone.

Remembering it was his father who pushed him to distribute the flyers on Queens Boulevard as a young boy, Izgelov said, “My father was always the driver of everything we’ve done. … I’ve lost him going on a year now, and I sometimes wish he was still around just to pick his brain. He was the kind of guy that without even being involved in the business, by just giving him literally two or three sentences of what I was facing, he was able to pivot me and move me forward. Today, although I don’t have him, the No. 1 question I always ask myself is, ‘What advice would my dad give me?’”

Although he came from humble beginnings with 12-15 family members sharing an apartment, Izgelov believes in the American Dream, just as his father did.

“The ability to achieve the American Dream that many people take for granted, for me and my family, that is the hugest motivator,” he said. “I have three beautiful kids and am married to an amazing, supportive wife. My parents worked very hard. They left us with the opportunity to make a life here in America. I want to be able to achieve that dream for them and pass that legacy on to my kids.”